Getting around.

Cta Agents' Image Takes New Tumble

Chuck works at the Board of Trade, which hardly qualifies him as a private investigator.

But he's no dummy, and he knows what he sees.

And what Chuck sees is a certain CTA ticket agent in a certain downtown subway station who routinely takes his cash fare and then rings up "transfer."

If this practice sounds familiar, it may be because you read a while back about six ticket agents in Dearborn Street subway stations who did the very same thing. They were snagged in an FBI investigation and subsequently convicted of stealing fare money.

You'd think that the mere thought of feds lurking in CTA tunnels would have a slightly chilling effect on further theft.

But Chuck can't believe the ticket agent he encounters is hitting the transfer button by mistake, and he can't help but think his $1.50 fare walks out of the booth with her at the end of her shift.

Dan works as a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and, from time to time in recent months, he's boarded trains at two different downtown subway stations from the one Chuck uses. And he reports seeing the same type of thing.

Work colleagues also have witnessed it, he said.

"We crack jokes about it," he said. "We say these people are making more than us."

Chuck and Dan, independent of one another, called me weeks after they said they notified the CTA and provided detailed information about suspected theft.

"I've called them a bunch of times," said Chuck, who asked that his last name not be printed in the newspaper, though he says he hasn't been shy about identifying himself to CTA officials. "They always tell me they're going to send a spotter out-this, that and the other thing."

Nothing appears to have happened so far. But recent events suggest CTA investigators have had their hands full on another front.

After months of probing, officials last Friday fired 11 train conductors in a suspected fare-skimming scam believed to have cost the financially beleaguered transit authority hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The conductors all worked late shifts, collecting fares aboard trains when station agents went off duty.

To CTA riders, who recently endured yet another fare increase and who face the possibility of new service cuts because of the authority's deteriorating financial condition, employee theft is nothing short of outrageous. And the scamming heaps unjustified scorn upon the thousands of honest CTA workers who make do with what they get in their paychecks.

After seven years of studying, testing, head-scratching and gear-shifting, the CTA under its newest management team is steaming toward installation of a new fare collection system designed to keep money and employees separate.

As currently conceived, riders would buy fare cards for, say, $20 or $40.

The card would be inserted by the passenger into bus fareboxes and station turnstiles, which would return them after deducting the cost of a ride.

Officials believe the $50 million system, through manpower savings and cash collection and processing efficiences-not to mention the pilferage it would stop-would pay for itself within five years.

Riders like Chuck and Dan, who would much prefer that their fares be used to fund the CTA than a handful of dishonest employees, can only hope it happens.

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No one would accuse the youthful miscreants who vandalize CTA property of being overly endowed between the ears. But a new level of stupidity was on display last week at the Ravenswood line's Montrose station.

The orange and white graffiti here was not on the station walls or on the platform, but down on the tracks, on one of the rails. The scrawler obviously was able to do his dirty work without being flattened by a train and, fortunately for him, he opted to work on one of the running rails.

A choice of the nearby third rail would have meant a truly electrifying experience, because 600 volts flow through that piece of steel.

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Potholes bring frustrated grunts and colorful language from most motorists who hit them or take panicked evasive action. But a Lake Shore Drive regular did more than curse and drive on last week, and the results were gratifying.

This Evanstonian has watched as a pothole next to a sewer in Lake Shore's southbound lanes near Foster Avenue gradually grew into a real tire buster.

Last Tuesday, he called City Hall and provided a precise description of its location to a worker who didn't even ask his name or ward affiliation.

By the time he made his commute to work the very next morning, he found a metal plate covering the hole. By Thursday morning, the pit was repaired.

"Maybe the key is for people to report the problem," he said.

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